I think there should be hearings on Benghazi

There are several legitimate unanswered questions.

One, did the consulate in Benghazi ask for more security only to be denied it? How far up the ladder was that request made? When was the request made? All of that is perfectly legitimate to be asked and if the administration messed this up it needs to be addressed.

Two, were prisoners being held in Benghazi by the CIA despite an executive order saying that the CIA wasn't supposed to be holding prisoners? Did the CIA do this and then lie about having done so causing the whole confusions as to the reason for the attack? If the CIA was holding prisoners in Benghazi were they holding prisoners in other places too?

Those are legitimate areas for oversight by Congress and the people deserve to know the answers to those questions.

1. Lindsey, is that you?

5. No

I just happen to believe that we deserve to know what is going on. I have heard directly conflicting reports in regards to the prisoner issue for example. Did we have a rouge CIA that wasn't following orders? Was that CIA the motive for the attack? Did the CIA then lie about their conduct so that we were confused about the motive for the attack? It should be noted there is still some confusion as to the motive for the attack.

if you're saying that's part and parcel of your request --NO, that's not what your request was. Your request is what is in your OP and this is not included --nor is there precedent for having a congressional inquiry grill congresspeople on the legislation they all voted to approve.

8. Fox didn't cause four people to die

Fox didn't cause us to not have any heavy weapons in position to try to save those four people. Fox didn't cause us to have competing narratives as to whether or not there were prisoners being held in Benghazi by the CIA. I am a huge Hilary supporter but I also think the chips should fall where they may. If she fucked this up, then she should be held accountable. If our CIA was rogue then it should be held accountable. Maybe this was an unavoidable tragedy. If so, then that is what an investigation would show. If not, then heads should roll.

50. Because I think it is more important that we deserve to govern than the idea that we simply govern

Do I think Hilary blew this, no? Is it possible, yes? The fact is people died here and we still have little idea why. To have a CIA site interrogating prisoners with little to no protection of the site was down right stupid. And the evidence suggests that is exactly what was going on. My guess is that we had rogue CIA agents and maybe even higher level CIA personnel who are to blame but if we decide that hearings don't matter we will never know.

72. yes it is

77. Then why are you claiming she should take the fall for it

When if she asked for more Security Hillary Clinton did her job. You inserted down thread that Hillary Clinton Maybe to blame yet if she is on the record for asking help then you should not be blaming Hillary Clinton.

139. if you're a fan of Hillary, I'd hate to see what a detractor would say

10. I'm of two minds about this

On one hand, the non-Fox press would have been all over this if there were a real issue. I'm an old Bartcop believer that "the liberal media" is anything but. It's all they've got, and they are going to try to make this into an impeachment issue because Obama is sure as hell not going to get caught with an intern or with his hand in the cookie jar, and if they can't vote him out, they'll try to pull a Clinton on him and undercut him with bullshit. Whitewater wasn't really anything, either, but they sure ran with it and distracted Clinton and the rest of the country with it.

On the other hand, if the hearings exposed some sort of CIA clusterfuckery under Petreaus, how badly does that hurt Obama? I don't know the answer to these questions - just thinking aloud

67. "Clusterfuckery" under Petreaus and whoever else was involved got four good men killed.

I don't want to see this repeated because of fear of the pubbies.

So the house will try to foil Obama. What else is new?

We do our investigation in the Senate.

I'd even be happy if the hearings were closed--at least there would be the possibility of improving the conditions under which our diplomats do the nation's business and maybe cleaning up yet another CIA clusterf---y.

Remember, four good men died serving their country.

Now, if we could just declare victory and get out of Afganistan, I'd be pleased.

7. There's going to be and it's going to get ugly

13. Ok....

..as soon as they have some retroactive hearings of those issues that occurred during the murky 2 terms of Bush's presidency....like when he and Chaney chose to answer questions secretly in the oval office surrounding the outing of the CIA agent and the WMDs propaganda...

76. I would have liked to have seen that when we controlled both houses of Congress.

However, Pres. Obama did not want to look back, remember? He didn't want to force consequences on people who got us into the Iraq mess, remember? The Pres. didn't want to roll back the Patriot Act and he gave us NDAA. It was very disappointing to some of us, obviously including you.

Why do you think that Reid will go against the President this time when he didn't during the past four years?

73. If anyone outside the CIA knew, it would most likely be Sec. Clinton.

Unless Amb. Rice remained involved after she, Clinton and Samantha power convinced the President to go in as a human rights intervention.

Rice went to Rwanda and saw the aftermath. Clinton probably feels guilty about the failure of Bill's administration to go in there. Power is a very active supporter of human rights as the guide for diplomatic and military action.

They probably saw Libya as a case in which they would not fail.

However, in Libya we may be dealing with people who may become our enemies later. Did anyone in the decision-making process understand that eastern Libya was a hotbed of radical Islam?

146. The underlying 'conspiracy theory' against the neocons...

is that they utilize Al Qaeda as a necessary agent to bring about change in the Middle East. The principle themes of neoconservatism involve "creative destruction" and regime change. Originally we provided the Mujahadeen with arms to fight off the communists in Afghanistan. Then, when we suddenly pulled out, it left a vacuum, along with a lot of arms, where former CIA associates could then form the next major enemy of the United States. Recall that during the Reagan era, when the Cold War was coming to a close, one of the first initiatives in the Middle East involved bombing Libya to take care of Kadafi (also spelled Gaddafi, etc) Even at that time, neoconservative minded hawks wanted to bomb the hell out of Russia, and continue that initiative across the Soviet Union and Middle East.

147. This time, I'm afraid that the object is to send arms to the folks fighting Assad in Syria.

However, there are suggestions that Amb. Rice, Sec. Clinton and Samantha Power were behind this push into Libya, largely because of the humanitarian aspect of Kadafi's war on the Islamists in Eastern Libya. With Rice (and I believe Clinton), her motivation may have its roots in the failure of the UN or US to go into Rwanda in the '90s to stop the killing. There's a few lines about this in Rice's Wiki.

I hate to see humanitarians start things that can be used by the Neocons (Hillary herself is something of a neocon) to further the neocon agenda.

149. This is an interesting article...

Those heavy weapons are most likely from Muammar Gaddafi's stock of about 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles—the bulk of them SA-7s—that the Libyan leader obtained from the former Eastern bloc. Reuters reports that Syrian rebels have been using those heavy weapons to shoot down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets.

The ship's captain was "a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organization called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support," which was presumably established by the new government.

That means that Ambassador Stevens had only one person—Belhadj—between himself and the Benghazi man who brought heavy weapons to Syria.

...

Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as "a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles" ... and that its security features "were more advanced than those at rented villa where Stevens died."

152. There's also speculation that....

arms may have gotten distributed to the wrong people, causing the Administration to cut back these shipments. This, in turn, may have pissed off Al Qaeda causing them to target Ambassador Stevens. I just posted this here:

30. the memo was reported on in 2002

and it wasn't until 2004 that we got Condii's testimony. And yes as I remember it, the battle over the investigations between Bush and Congress was fairly epic, whether we would have them at all, who would testify, and whether they would be public.

33. So maybe before anyone testifies before congress, the investigations

should be allowed to complete.

We've watched the GOP try to impeach a Dem President for a BJ ...

I can't think of a reason to let the GOP hold another impeachment trial because a Republican General and CIA Director who was also having an affair, might have provided limited and incorrect info to the the Obama administration.

31. frankly I think the way the GOP reacted to 9/11 was the beginning of the end for them

and conversely the way Obama reacted to the first debate is why he won. The GOP refused to find facts and thus didn't learn from their mistakes before 9/11. It is simply absurd that Bill Maher is the only person fired over 9/11. Rice should have been fired for sure. Rumsfeld maybe. Instead they doubled down on the see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil policy and when Katrina happened the entire country saw just how badly run the government under Bush was. But remember Bush's aides had to make a DVD of Katrina coverage for him before he would acknowledge himself that he was naked. Conversely Obama looked at his own performance in the debate and recognized need for change.

102. +10000 n/t

17. We have to show we can be fair minded and if we made mistakes, we will not hide or

try and make excuses. Just because we are Democrats does not mean we can't make mistakes, and it shows us in a good light if we can show we will not overlook any mistakes we MAY have made. I am not opposed to a full investigation. The truth is important and unbiased.

41. "thanks to the Issa hearings"?

47. I am sorry you can't understand sarcasm

but the fact is the Issa hearings did expose our CIA station in Benghazi, something that was frankly a security breach for them to do, but it is done. As to your other issue this below, in bold, is the text you dishonestly decided not to quote. It was all of a paragraph and is the entire OP. You frankly quoted the way you did for one reason and one reason only, you counted on no one to actually click the link and instead rely on the title (which was clearly sarcastic as the part you purposely left out showed). Here is the text you left out.

All we would have to do is require each business to each month fill out a form stating exactly how many employees they have and how many hours they work. If we had no exceptions even for sole proprietorships then we would have exact numbers. Somehow I doubt he would go for this.

end of quote

You have no problem quoting paragraphs of text you want us to see so again there is only one reason you left out my text, it was to dishonestly suggest I am an Issa fan. You should be ashamed of your conduct.

54. sorry you can't see that

but that isn't my fault, it is yours. If you can't see that the OP on unemployment numbers was sarcastic it says a whole lot more about you than about me. Just as your dishonest quote of me says a whole lot more about you than about me.

66. You are doing exactly what Issa did: mixing Benghazi with Tripoli. Why?

The requests were for Tripoli, not Benghazi. You are doing exactly what Issa did. Why is that? It is not true. Either you didn't know better when you wrote your OP and now you do know better, or you knew better and wrote it anyway.

62. Exactly. The OP asserts the consulate requested security when it was the embassy.

Thank you. The Fox line (lies) intentionally conflates Benghazi with Tripoli. Fox News along with the entire Issa charade was to make it look like the request of extra security that was requested by the "embassy" in Tripoli and that was turned down somehow magically (falsely) was a request from the consulate in Benghazi. It never happened.

The OP is just wrong and further propagates that falsehood (hopefully in innocence, but regardless it is not true) and is, as you posted above, is the very same message right out of Fox Nation.

It is obvious that the GOP wants to impeach President Obama and the Issa "hearings" were the first step. This is the Monica/Whitewater shit all over again.

I am very disappointed to see this here in a thread at the DU just days after our President won re-election after billions of lies and blatant racist shit was hurled at him.

ProSense, all of this Benghazi crap including John McCain's request for a "Watergate" investigation is all to set up a fishing expedition just like they did with Bill Clinton when they morphed Whitewater into sex. It's about impeachment and I smell it and I don't like it.

68. the sad thing is unless you pay attention to politics news

you do not know the Lies. It is easy to get away with what this person is doing because a newbie like me may not know the true story. The only reason I know is I read sites and watch the news on other stations other then fox. It can easily mislead someone who doesn't pay attention.

74. Welcome to the DU.

First,

There is already a massive effort to bring down President Obama's presidency as they did with Bill Clinton.

The Issa hearings were a disgrace and he cut off every witness who tried to explain that the "requests" for additional security had been for the embassy in Tripoli which were turned down and they were apparently not needed. Fox and all continue to press that those requests had been for the consulate in Benghazi and they knowingly are conflating the two maliciously. And there is a very big difference. Why some seem bent on continuing that falsehood (here of all places) is disturbing.

80. I look at it this way

If there had been something there then it would have come out in the first one. Republicans were determine to win at any cost. If they had some big evidence it would have come out during the Election. It failed and Obama has handled the matter. The person is calling to upset what Obama is doing. This dsc isn't even allowing the President the respect to conduct his own means. I trust the President and I think he can do a better job then this dsc thinks giving it to a congress would.

48. we control the Senate last time I checked

45. Although I agree that ALL attacks

upon US Embassies should be investigated, I oppose using ANY of them for political reasons as Benghazi has become.

There should be Congressional hearings on ALL attacks on US Embassies including the multiple attacks and deaths during the Bush Administration, not just Benghazi.

It has been established that the requests for additional security was for a separate facility, not for Benghazi. Or haven't you been reading the blurbs?

There was a CIA establishment near the Embassy which appears to have been the major target and the Embassy appears to have been collateral damage. Despite the CIA secrecy, since non-CIA agents were killed we should know.

This is a classical example of a cluster-fuck. Much of what happened will never come to light since it is CIA related. But it did result in the deaths of 4 American Civilians. It comes down to the CIA.

49. I doubt that the second question can be answered honestly and publicly.

1) It goes to practices and methods of the CIA. Those must always be protected and so cannot be addressed publicly.

2) The US cannot confirm its US Diplomatic facilities are sometimes CIA prisons. This would result in the populations of host countries objecting to US diplomatic presence. Consequently, the answer will always be denial of the use of diplomatic facilities to hold foreign prisoners whether that is true or not.

79. yes a Senate investigation would be a witch hunt

after all we lost control of the Senate, no wait we didn't. The fact is we have no idea what the information is or isn't. We do know that a lightly defended consulate was attacked with four deaths. We do know that the CIA had a substation there. Were they interrogating prisoners? There is some evidence they were, I would like to know. In a Democracy we have a right to know. BTW forgot for a moment who I am addressing, the subject line is sarcasm since apparently you need to be told that every time it is used.

91. Yes, unlike you, I have enough respect for the President to trust that hearings would show he did

his job. I love the president like an adult, not a child. If mistakes were made, then I think we deserve to know them. It is Congress' job to investigate this stuff. We control the Senate. If for no other reason than the House will conduct hearings, the Senate should conduct hearings that will hopefully not be in the control of partisan hacks. At the very least we had a very lightly protected CIA substation in what was known to be at best, potentially hostile territory. Is that usual? If it is usual, is it wise? Did we bother to tell the state department that we were using its consulate as a CIA substation? Were they, or were they not, interrogating prisoners? Sorry but I don't trust the CIA to be honest about this stuff. Jesus could be the President and I still wouldn't trust the CIA to give me the correct time of day in a room full of clocks.

71. among other things the security would tend to go with the Ambassador

who was in Benghazi. Second, there is some evidence that Benghazi also asked for security (had they known about the CIA prison, if it existed, one would imagine they may have wanted it even more). The fact is we have no earthly idea want went on. Was the CIA running a rogue operation? Did they lie after the attack to protect the rogue operation? What we do know is that we have a very lightly protected consulate (not a surprise since most are) that got invaded with disasterous results. That consulate was home to a major CIA substation. That substation may, or may not, have been interrogating prisoners. Any such interrogations would have been in violation of an executive order issued by Obama. Now, silly me, I think it is important to know if the CIA is, or is not, violating executive orders. Now, silly me, I think it is important to know if indeed security was, or was not asked for. The GOP refused to investigate 9/11, then refused to investigate Iraq, then refused to investigate Katrina. Each mistake they refused to investigate or acknowledge, lead to bigger mistakes, which eventually lead to them being tossed out on their ears. That is what happens when you refuse to investigate mistakes. Thankfully, Obama understands that concept given his reaction to the first debate.

78. Your OP wrongly implied that the security requests had been for Benghazi.

And you are still doing it. What's up with you?

Lindsey Graham, John McCain and you are wanting investigations into Benghazi days after President Obama was re-elected. This isy our burning issue right now?

And you continue to conflate Benghazi with Tripoli. So you intend to continue to do this when you know it is false. I didn't need to read that falsehood at the DU, I can hear it on Fox and from Rush Limbaugh.

114. Oh, yeah---I guess you're right.

EVERYONE trusts Graham and McCain. No sour grapes or political axes to grind there!
Veritable fountains of truth and integrity and sound judgment! After all, John is the man who gave us SARAH! Who wouldn't want him to ramrod this investigation.

By the way, is Cheney busy? He could help us poor Democrats straighten this out.

94. Actually, the question about whether the CIA was holding prisoners goes

to the heart of the issue.

The CIA can deny it was holding them, but who in this day and age would believe one word coming out of the self-same CIA that committed fraud on the American people with regard to WMDs in Iraq?

Only when it denies it under penalty of perjury will the CIA's denial carry much weight, imho. That's why a hearing where its officers are sworn in under penalty of perjury is now the only acceptable way to satisfy the questions.

95. +1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000 - n/t

96. Where is your proof for your assertion above?

You posted the following above: ""there is some evidence that Benghazi also asked for security". Even Fox News has not said that. Did you just make it up, as one poster asked, or do you have some classified breaking news to support your statement?

132. Except The Original "Radical Republicans" Were Trying To Do The Right Thing/nt

117. ah get the fainting couch

for your are so shocked. Yes, I think that the executive, even a Democratic one, should be accountable to the public and their representatives, so shocking. But if you want an out of control CIA then fine live with it. but don't come crying when that CIA decides to gore your ox.

143. why won't you answer WHY you are mixing Tripoli with Benghazi as Issa and Fox News have?

105. "Please proceed." Republicans should be careful what they wish for here.

At the presser yesterday, when Obama was defending Ambassador Rice from McCain, et al's bullshit, he was very clear he's happy to look into and talk about Benghazi. Perhaps VERY happy.

They should stop and think about that.

The big point the Republicans seem to think they can push is that Rice and the administration at first focused on the attack as being a spontaneous part of the 9/11 anti-Muslim film protests, vs. a planned terrorist attack.

It's all pretty stupid, because there's no reason for the administration to have been deliberately deceptive about it -- the most you could say is that information developed, which is exactly what you'd expect. Protest or planned attack, it doesn't matter whether they knew it on Day One or two weeks later. It's an investigation. There's no "gotcha" for not having it exactly right immediately.

Morever, the source of the talking points Rice gave, which the Republicans are trying to bash her over the head with -- was the CIA, not the administration.

So, whether someone was initially wrong, or learned as the investigation proceeded, or "lied" as the Republicans and rightwing pundits want to suggest, it wasn't Obama doing it. It was the CIA, which leaves Petraeus responsible.

They won't like that. Republicans love Petraeus -- he supposedly proved we could "win" in Iraq with the "surge" strategy that really wasn't, and really didn't. Discrediting him sucks for them.

Further, as for the connected sex scandal, apparently a conservative-minded FBI agent pushed it when it didn't really meet the standards of "cybercrime," then took it to Cantor, hoping it would hurt Obama somehow. But Cantor mysteriously sat on the scandal. Why?

In their frantic attempt to create a scandal right before the election, Republicans may have committed themselves to a course that will embarrass them, not the administration. I think Obama may know that. As Rachel Maddow pointed out last night, he had the same look on his face; used the same tone, as when he encouraged Romney to "proceed" when he stepped in it vis a vis Benghazi.

It ain't exactly 12-dimensional chess, but I think Obama's letting them outsmart themselves the same way he let Romney commit on the Rose Garden speech. They're rushing to open a can of worms, without thinking about what may come out and bite them.

112. Or he's a darn good bluffer! ;-)

118. They may think that, but it seems unlikely.

The main problem is there's no good underlying conspiracy narrative to start with. What are they even trying to suggest? That the administration had good warning of an impending attack and ignored it, then tried to blame the protest?

There's no obvious basis for a theory like that, except assuming Obama is bad, bad, bad. That's enough for rightwingers, obviously, but it's going to shrivel and die in the light of day.

And I don't think Obama's a particularly good bluffer. He's telegraphed all of his compromises with the Republicans pretty clearly, for example. The administration is perfectly happy to try to lay down carefully vague language when it's trying to float something it doesn't necessarily want to cop to.

I don't think he'd react to a genuine "gotcha" moment with his very rare anger and this kind of push-back.

121. wonder if you will be attacked like I was

122. Respectfully, I don't think we're saying the same thing.

Your OP could be interpreted as agreeing with the Republicans' disingenuous insinuation that Obama lied about the attack to cover up some failure of the administration, which is a specious claim. They're acting like he invented the protests or crafted the CIA talking points, which is ludicrous.

I agree Broadwell's little boast about militant prisoners raises an issue, but that, like the overall explanation of the attack, would again fall in Petraeus' lap, not Obama's.

I don't think we need an investigation into whether Obama deliberately mislead the country -- there's no reason to think that.

What I think is that the Republicans' frantic efforts to find a narrative here with which to bash Obama will either fall flat, or blowback on Petraeus. It could also open up the very interesting issue of why Eric Cantor sat on Petraeus' sex scandal all through the election.

124. Like it or not the congress is all we have

135. I don't actually think you want to learn anything about the topic

because nothing has ever, ever been learned in a congressional hearing, ever.

studies, sure.

investigations, frequently.

inquiries, why not.

but Senate hearings? whatever you are going on about that you *must* know, you sure as hell know that you won't be hearing or learning those things in a Senate hearing. you will hear a lot of lies and demogogery but if you really want to learn the facts of what happened --which finding out is not as simple as you make it sound, if you want to learn those facts, a Senate hearing won't provide that for you.

so i don't know what the hell you want, because what you say you want makes no sense in light of what you're asking for.

153. two things

First as to hearings never mattering. The Church hearings in the 1970's managed to clean up the CIA for a time. Sadly they didn't stick but they did expose many things we didn't know were going on and probably kept the CIA clean for the rest of the 1970's. The Watergate hearings caused Nixon to resign and put in many laws that kept our politics relatively clean for decades. Now, would these hearings have that kind of effect, probably not? But if it at least got the CIA on the record as to prisoner interrogation that would be a start.

The simple fact is that the Congress is the body that is given the power, and the responsibility, to check both the excesses and the messes of the executive.

150. Now do you see the futility of working in/with the system?

These are the self-appointed good cops you're trying to talk to. The self-described "reasonable people", who believe themselves to be "reality based" and respectful of facts and truth. And they're not one bit different.

They have their own truthiness, buster, and you just pissed all over it. Prepare to fry.

154. since it has been asked multiple times I will respond to the request for security in Benghazi here

The documents also included an “ACTION MEMO” for Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy dated December 27, 2011, and written by US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman. With the subject line: “Future of Operations in Benghazi, Libya,” the memo states: “With the full complement of five Special Agents, our permanent presence would include eight U.S. direct hire employees.”

This would seem to suggest that Undersecretary Kennedy had approved a plan for five permanent security agents in Benghazi, but that never happened. It should be noted that there were ultimately a total of five Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi that night since there were two stationed at the Benghazi compound, and three escorted Ambassador Chris Stevens to the compound.

155. That doesn't support your claim.

From the OP: "One, did the consulate in Benghazi ask for more security only to be denied it?"

This article attempts to spin more noice, but it wasn't denied

The documents also included an “ACTION MEMO” for Under Secretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy dated December 27, 2011, and written by US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman. With the subject line: “Future of Operations in Benghazi, Libya,” the memo states: “With the full complement of five Special Agents, our permanent presence would include eight U.S. direct hire employees.”

This would seem to suggest that Undersecretary Kennedy had approved a plan for five permanent security agents in Benghazi, but that never happened. It should be noted that there were ultimately a total of five Diplomatic Security Agents in Benghazi that night since there were two stationed at the Benghazi compound, and three escorted Ambassador Chris Stevens to the compound.